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    Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble
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    Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble
    Unavailable
    Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble
    Audiobook14 hours

    Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble

    Written by Antony Beevor

    Narrated by Sean Barrett

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Ardennes 1994 by Antony Beever, read by Sean Barrett.

    On 16 December 1944, Hitler launched his 'last gamble' in the snow-covered forests and gorges of the Ardennes on the Belgian/German border. Although Hitler's generals were doubtful of success, younger officers and NCOs were desperate to believe that their homes and families could be saved from the vengeful Red Army approaching from the east. The Ardennes offensive, with more than a million men involved, became the greatest battle of the war in western Europe.

    In January 1945, when the Red Army launched its onslaught towards Berlin, the once-feared German war machine was revealed to be broken beyond repair. The Ardennes was the battle which finally broke the Wehrmacht.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin UK Audio
    Release dateMay 21, 2015
    ISBN9780241203392
    Unavailable
    Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble

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    Reviews for Ardennes 1944

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      I always approach Antony Beevor's books expecting the same high standards:Meticulous research / attention to detail/ well paced narrative/ impartiality and an ability to retain reader interest.This book does not disappoint.Readers will find out all about this winner takes all phase of the war which reveals the strengths and weaknesses on b. A wonderful book!ooth sides and how close the allies came to losing before the Germans literally ran out of gas!
    • 4/5
      Excellent history of Hitler's gamble in December 1944 ,which we know as the "Battle of the Bulge". The author is very critical of Generals Bradley and Montgomery , showing them as "prima donnas" ,who were more worried about their public persona and were prone to take and give offence easily. Indeed the "heroes" of this battle were the ordinary foot soldiers who stopped and held up the German advance, while the Generals were in shock at the "intelligence failure". Beevor also points out the suffering of Belgian civilians during the battle. We also read that some Generals were encouraging their men to take no prisoners in retaliation for the German shootings at Malmedy. Very good reading.
    • 4/5
      Antony Beevor is the finest World War II historian around and "Ardennes 1944", while not at the level of "The Battle for Spain" or "Stalingrad", is a very good account of the Battle of the Bulge, that fleeting moment in late December when the Germans surprised the Americans and regained some territory. In my humble opinion what Beevor does better than other war historians is incorporating the little details that get lost in the broader war; General Patton's awful poetry, the frozen stiff German soldier with his arm out frozen, allowing American soldiers to shake his hand whenever they passed, and of course Kurt Vonnegut Jnr's capture during the battle, are just a few of the vignettes that give us more insight into the Battle of the Bulge than any dry recounting of the Ardennes offensive could.
    • 4/5
      On December 16, 1944, sixteen German divisions launched an offensive against American forces in the thinly-held Ardennes Forest region of the Western Front. The brainchild of Adolf Hitler, its goal was to disrupt the Allied campaign in the west by seizing the recently-cleared port of Antwerp, which was playing a vital role in supplying the American, British, and Canadian armies. Though the assault caught the Americans by surprise, many units posed a determined defense that slowed down the German advance, buying time for reinforcements to be rushed to the region. As a result of this response, the German offensive bogged down and was broken in less than two weeks, leaving a "bulge" in the lines that was gradually reduced over the following month before the campaign's end in late January 1945.

      Thanks to its dramatic circumstances the Battle of the Bulge has never wanted for attention, particularly from American historians. One of the virtues of Antony Beevor's account of the campaign is his scope of coverage. Opening his book with the liberation of Paris, he takes his readers through the operations on the Western Front in the autumn of 1944 in order to show the circumstances that defined the battle. Here he gives particular attention to the battle of Hürtgen Forest, the frustrated American offensive which wore down several divisions of the American First Army that were transferred to the "quiet" Ardennes region to recover. The thinly held sector was thus especially vulnerable to a German assault, which Hitler was determined to launch in a last gamble to decide the war on his terms.

      Key to the Germans' plan was the element of surprise. Beevor chronicles well their preparations for the offensive, including the deception efforts made to conceal their intentions. Though American intelligence detected signs of the build-up, the Germans were aided by Allied assumptions that a German offensive was simply too impractical to contemplate. While the Germans exploited this, Beevor underscores the strain the massive diversion of resources imposed on their war effort. With their men exhausted and their supplies limited, nearly every German commander regarded the effort as a waste of men and materiel in an attack with little chance of success.

      The first ten days of the offensive form the heart of Beevor's book. He covers events in a series of chapters that provide a day-to-day chronicle of operations. Through these pages he emphasizes the difficult conditions facing the men on both sides, who battled exhaustion and the cold weather as well as each other. Beevor also gives attention to the experience of the civilians, most of whom had experienced the joy of liberation just a few months beforehand. Their lives were soon threatened not just by the fighting but by German security forces determined to exact revenge. Though his coverage here provides a degree of depth lacking from most accounts of the battle, it lacks the detail about the civilian experience Beevor provided in D-Day: The Battle for Normandy and would have benefited from additional development.

      This is a minor complaint that shouldn't overshadow Beevor's achievement here, though. Overall his book provides its readers with a clear description of the events of the battle and the factors that shaped its outcome. Seasoned as it is with his often sharp judgment of the personalities in command on both sides, his book serves as an effective account of the campaign. It compliments nicely his superb history of the D-Day campaign and is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in this important episode in the history of the Second World War.
    • 4/5
      Excellent summary and analysis for the largest battle fought by US troops in WW 2. Typical senior officer malaise; Bradley was out of touch, lounging in Luxembourg and spent most of his energy and thoughts on making certain that Montgomery would rerurn his loaned Army and whether he would be discredited for his failure to act. As a long time friend and colleague of Eisenhower, he need not worry. He got his army back and a fourth star. Montgomery was his usual arrogant and obnoxious self and was finally shunted to an appropriately secondary role for the remainder of the war.Lots of maps, hooray! Having traveled these areas of battle recently, I am truly astonished that anyone, in 1944, could maneuver armies in this terrain. This landscape produced many fierce fire fights fought by both sides with determination by the American side and fanaticism by the Germans. At the sharp end, there were many mistakes made but enough unit and tactical competence, assisted by horrendous terrain and weather to slow the Germans until they quite literally ran out of gas.
    • 4/5
      A very readable and reasonable account of the last great German offensive of the war on the western front. With the use of maps and concise dialogue this is a story that is easy to follow although in places, you can find yourself searching to see where the various units are. A good narrative that is uncompromising about the failures of both sides and in deed in the egos and vested interests in the allied commanders too. Interesting and worth reading for those who like history but particularly for those that want to know about the western front, high leadership and the end of the war from an Allied point of view.
    • 3/5
      I have been a fan of Beevor’s books for some time. While not exactly a series, he has done a succession of WW2 campaign histories. This is not one of his better efforts. This is perhaps the 20th book on the campaign I have read [not counting the dozen or so board games I played on the topic]. So I could mentally reference the things he left out. Essentially he has done excellent tactical and terrain feel, barely adequate strategic overview and omitted the operational level. The tactical descriptions were quite good and gave a feel for what WW2 combat was like [a succession of platoon to battalion encounters that linked into a larger whole]. He does make the classic error of taking allied claims of how many Tiger tanks they faced seriously. Men in combat are not good at identifying enemy equipment. This is more true in conscript armies and for a variety of reasons the inept US individual replacement system produced a lot of very untrained men at the forward edge of battle. Every German armored vehicle was a Tiger to them, every artillery piece an 88. He avoided the second error, but fell into the first. It’s a minor thing but it grates. It is the operational level that is truly lacking. He does quite good command criticism, pointing out that few of the corps through theater commanders had a good grasp of the realities of the situations of their forces or their opponents. However he never tells you what they thought they saw. I could incorporate by reference from prior readings but this will be VERY frustrating if this is your first or second book on this campaign. He clearly knows his topic so my guess is the text was overedited by someone who either didn’t know or care. Finally, he brings to light new material on how destructive the campaign was to the local Belgians as well as the tit for tat rounds of executions of prisoners triggered by Peiper’s casual massacres.
    • 5/5
      The 1944 German offensive in the Ardennes forest “had brought the terrifying brutality of the eastern front to the west,” concludes Antony Beevor in this book. And “terrifying brutality” is an accurate description indeed of this month-long battle. Civilians were slaughtered in their scores — by both sides, though on the German side it was intentional. Prisoners of war were killed by both sides — though, to be fair, that began with the SS massacre of captured American soldiers early on. The everyday brutality of the Ardennes battle is shown in many individual episodes Beevor recounts. He describes an Allied soldier having hanged a German soldier’s corpse from a tree and lit a fire under it. Why do this? To defrost the frozen body so that he could remove the soldier’s boots. (German boots were apparently more water-resistant than the American ones.)There are moments when it seems that the Germans might have had a chance. At one point hundreds of Luftwaffe planes take off — long after Allied commanders had written the German air force off as a fighting force. Elite SS Panzer divisions fight ferociously even in the final days of the battle. But in reality, there was never a moment, not even at the beginning of the offensive, when the Germans stood a chance of turning the tide of war. In fact, the main effect of Hitler’s decision to launch a last-ditch offensive in the west was to ease the Soviet offensive launched in January 1945, as so few troops were left to defend Germany’s eastern borders.This is a detailed, authoritative account that works on all levels — from the high command down to individual soldiers and civilians. Probably the last book I will ever have to read about what Americans call “the battle of the bulge”.